Cuba–Soviet Union relations

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Cuba-Soviet Union relations reached their most dangerous moment in 1962. Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a preemptive nuclear strike to annihilate the United States. Khrushchev declined. But the fact that such a request was even made reveals how tightly these two nations had bound themselves together. A small Caribbean island and a nuclear superpower had become military and economic partners. How did that happen? And what did it cost when it came apart? In 1985, trade with the Soviets accounted for more than 70 percent of Cuba's entire trade.

• 2. A Revolution Moscow Missed

  ›

  Maxim Litvinov opened the first Soviet embassy in Havana in 1943, as World War II drew the two nations into a tentative diplomatic relationship. Cuban diplomats, operating under President Fulgencio Batista, visited Moscow that same year. Litvinov's successor, Andrei Gromyko, became ambassador to both the US and Cuba but never visited the island during his tenure.

  Ramón Grau's government and that of Carlos Prío Socarrás both sought to isolate the Cuban Communist Party. Ties with Moscow were severed after the war. Batista's return to power in a 1952 coup brought the full closure of the Soviet embassy.

  The Cuban Revolution propelled Fidel Castro to power on the 1st of January 1959, but it attracted little attention in Moscow. Soviet planners had long resigned themselves to American dominance over the Western Hemisphere. They had no framework for the possibility of a future ally in the region. Khrushchev later testified that neither the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee nor KGB intelligence knew who Castro was. They had no idea what he stood for. Khrushchev advised his team to consult the Cuban communists. Their assessment was damning. They reported that Castro was a representative of the "haute bourgeoisie" and was working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

  In February 1960, Khrushchev sent his deputy Anastas Mikoyan to Cuba to discover what motivated the new leader. Castro had just returned from a failed trip to Washington, where US President Dwight Eisenhower had refused to grant him a meeting. Mikoyan returned from Cuba convinced that Castro's government deserved economic and political support.

  Washington's tightening economic embargo had left Cuba scrambling for new markets. Cuba and the Soviet Union signed their first trade deal in 1960, exchanging Cuban sugar for Soviet fuel. Beginning that same year and running through 1990, the Soviets provided all of Cuba's oil needs on credit, at subsidized prices. That debt was never repaid.

  After the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, Castro publicly declared Cuba a socialist republic. Khrushchev sent congratulations but privately believed that American forces would soon return in much greater strength. The defense of the island had become a matter of prestige for Moscow.

• 3. The October Precipice

  ›

  Khrushchev agreed on a deployment plan in May 1962, primarily in response to Castro's fears of another American invasion. By late July, after signing the Soviet-Cuban Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Defence Treaty, more than 60 Soviet ships were en route to Cuba. Some were carrying military material. Khrushchev and Castro planned to secretly install nuclear-armed ballistic missiles on the island before revealing any defense pact. The missiles would be aimed at the United States.

  A U-2 aircraft photographed surface-to-air missile sites under construction on the morning of October 14. Eight days later, US President John F. Kennedy announced the discovery in a televised address. He stated that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba would be treated as a Soviet attack. The United States would respond accordingly. The Castro brothers and Che Guevara had become popular figures among the Soviet public. Many saw them as echoes of the leaders of the Russian Revolution. Their popularity among ordinary Soviets did not extend to the Politburo, which was alarmed by how Castro handled the crisis.

  Khrushchev sent letters to Kennedy on October 23 and October 24. He argued that the missiles served only a deterrent purpose and that Soviet intentions were peaceful. On October 26, the Soviets offered to withdraw the missiles from Cuba. In exchange, they asked for a US guarantee not to invade Cuba and the removal of American missiles from southern Italy and Turkey. Kennedy accepted the terms, and the crisis abated.

  Castro had not been consulted at any point during the Kennedy-Khrushchev negotiations. His anger at the unilateral Soviet withdrawal was fierce. What the crisis paradoxically achieved was a cooling of Cuban-Soviet relations, even as it produced a thaw between Washington and Moscow.

  The Soviets created a signals intelligence facility at Lourdes, just south of Havana, in 1962. This station allowed them to monitor all US military and civilian geosynchronous communications satellites. It ranked among the most significant intelligence capabilities the Soviets trained on the United States. The station operated for four decades, finally closing in 2002.

  The People's Republic of China publicly criticized the resolution of the crisis. That criticism would soon become a fault line running through Castro's own relationships.

• 4. Between Moscow and Beijing

  ›

  In June 1963, Castro made a historic visit to the Soviet Union, the first since the missile crisis. He returned home speaking warmly of the Siberian hydro power stations he had witnessed under construction.

  Castro addressed Soviet agricultural methods and repeatedly emphasized the need to apply Soviet experience to Cuba's socialist challenges. He told his hosts that the Soviet people had expressed "by their deeds their love for and solidarity with Cuba." In Moscow, he and Khrushchev negotiated new sugar export deals and methods for increasing output. But beneath the warmth, significant strains were developing.

  Castro had begun building closer ties with China, exploiting the growing Sino-Soviet split. He declared his intention to remain neutral and to keep fraternal relations with all socialist states. The split also drove a wedge between Castro and Che Guevara. Guevara had adopted a more Maoist outlook as the ideological conflict between the Soviet and Chinese communist parties deepened. In 1966, Guevara left for Bolivia in an ill-fated attempt to stir up revolution against René Barrientos' US-sponsored military junta.

  On the 23rd of August 1968, Castro made a gesture that would define Cuba's place in the Soviet bloc. Two days had passed since Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring. Castro publicly denounced the Czechoslovak "rebellion" on the airwaves. He warned that the reformers were "moving Czechoslovakia towards capitalism and into the arms of imperialists." He called the rebellion's leaders "agents of West Germany and fascist reactionary rabble." Many Soviet allies condemned the invasion as an infringement of Czechoslovak sovereignty.

  For his public backing, the Soviets rewarded Cuba with extra loans and an immediate increase in oil exports. Soviet leaders privately complained about Castro's mismanagement of the Cuban economy and the burden of providing direct aid.

• 5. The Brezhnev Partnership

  ›

  In 1972, Cuba gained membership in Comecon, the economic organization that linked the communist planned economies. Comecon classified Cuba as an underdeveloped member country. That status entitled Cuba to obtain oil in direct exchange for sugar at highly favorable rates. The hard currency Cuba earned by re-exporting Soviet oil helped fund imports from non-Comecon countries and investments in social services.

  Between January 28 and the 3rd of February 1974, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev undertook a state visit to Cuba. He was the first Soviet leader to visit Cuba or any country in Latin America. The Soviet delegation included Foreign Affairs Minister Andrey Gromyko, Ivan Arkhipov, and General Director of TASS Leonid Zamyatin. Brezhnev arrived at José Martí International Airport to a reception with full military honors, rendered by the Ceremonial Unit of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.

  On January 29, the delegation visited Plaza de la Revolución and laid a wreath at the José Martí Memorial. Talks followed in the Palace of the Revolution. More than a million Cubans took part in a Cuban-Soviet friendship rally on Revolution Square in Havana. On January 31, in the suburbs of Havana, Brezhnev and Castro jointly opened the Lenin Secondary Special Boarding School. At the visit's end, Brezhnev was awarded the Order of José Martí.

  From 1976-1980, the Soviets invested US$1.7 billion in the construction and remodeling of Cuban factories and industry. In 1981-1984, Cuba received approximately US$750 million a year in Soviet military assistance. The economic and military commitments of the Brezhnev years would prove difficult to sustain when a new style of leadership arrived in Moscow.

• 6. Perestroika vs. Rectification

  ›

  Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, following the death of General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko. Both nations continued to collaborate on projects in the sciences, technology, sports, and education. Gorbachev's program of perestroika and glasnost soon created an ideological rupture with Havana. The transition toward market reforms weakened the Soviet ruble, caused widespread shortages of basic goods, and produced job losses and falling productivity. These difficulties spread to Soviet satellites across Eastern Europe, including Cuba.

  In 1986, Castro launched his own reform program, which he called the "rectification of errors" campaign. Its purpose was to forestall reformist ideas from spreading to Cuba from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Cuban policies and Soviet perestroika were pulling in opposite directions.

  Castro attacked glasnost during a joint Soviet-Cuban conference in Havana in 1988. The Soviet elite grew openly critical of their country's foreign policy toward Cuba, and critical articles began appearing in Soviet newspapers. Castro responded in February 1989 by leading a small expulsion of Soviet diplomats from the embassy. He also banned Soviet publications from circulating in Cuba, stating: "We could not hesitate to prevent the circulation of Soviet publications in Cuba."

  In April 1989, Gorbachev traveled to Cuba in an attempt at reconciliation. Despite Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze describing the meeting as "a milestone in Soviet-Cuban relations," the visit was largely symbolic. Castro had declared the Soviet-Cuban alliance void 24 hours before Gorbachev's arrival. Relations declined rapidly after Gorbachev returned to Moscow.

  By 1989, Moscow was paying only three times the world price for Cuban sugar. In 1985, it had paid more than eleven times the world price. For many in the Soviet elite, continuing to subsidize Cuba while facing their own economic collapse seemed increasingly untenable. A new one-year trade agreement, signed in late 1990, replaced the previous five-year agreements. For the first time, it set Cuban sugar at world market prices.

• 7. The Special Period

  ›

  In June 1991, the Soviet Union disbanded Comecon, the institution that had once accounted for almost 85 percent of Cuba's entire trade. That dissolution further strained Cuba's already weakened economic situation. On the 11th of September 1991, Gorbachev announced that all Soviet troops would be removed from Cuba. Castro believed this move undermined Cuba's struggle against US imperialism.

  After a Soviet coup attempt in August 1991, Cuban leaders began openly criticizing the Soviet reforms. An editorial in Granma, published days after the coup, blamed Soviet moves toward privatization and market economics for the events that had unfolded.

  The Soviet Union formally ceased to exist in December 1991. The effect on Cuba was immediate and devastating. Valuable aid and trading privileges vanished. Cuba entered a social and economic crisis that became known as the Special Period.

  Trade with the former Soviet Union fell by more than 90 percent. The Soviet Union had previously imported 80 percent of Cuban sugar and 40 percent of Cuban citrus. Oil imports dropped from 13 million tons in 1989 to roughly 3 million tons in 1993.

  Cuba responded with what it called a "zero-option approach." The government established tariff-free trading agreements and began developing the pharmaceutical industry and tourism as new economic pillars.